The stand I will take

Story of the day:

Neil tells his story here and here.

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The complex chaos of politics … and yet it affects our lives in the most fundamental ways. It really does not matter what my opinion is or is not. It matters the actual stand I take or do not. The agony and rage of the human condition is overwhelming.

Two years ago I left Israel after visiting my family. I was terribly sad to leave them and travel across the thousands of miles back to America once again. My mother was aged, and I missed her just as soon as we bade farewell. My hand fell to my side as I stood on the shuttle bus carrying me and many others to the waiting plane, tears of sorrowful parting flowing down my cheeks. Suddenly I felt little fingers grasping hold of my hand and I looked down. A small toddler in a stroller had reached out her hand to mine and she was looking up at me anxiously. I smiled through my tears and then noticed her mother smiling back at me. She was dressed in traditional clothing with a hijab covering her head. We were flying together on the same plane to America, me, an Israeli-American atheist and she a Christian or Muslim Arab woman. We continued our short journey on the bus, Arab child and I hand in hand, her mother smiling at us both all the way.

I refuse to enter into raging, agonizing arguments on the Internet or through my blog. I would rather listen to the stories that all people tell me, all the while looking into their eyes with empathy and compassion.

This is the stand I will take.

I will work tirelessly through my actions, writings, dreams, awareness-raising, and aspirations to rid, at the very least, my mini-universe from the disease of patriarchy. For all children, nay, all of humanity are punished – all suffer – from the violence and dominance that is patriarchy.

And if along the way, as I tell my own story, my experience of my life, you feel hurt by that, I will try and understand that your survival affects how you hear me.

And I will remind myself of these things over and over again, especially when darkness rages all around.

This is the stand I will take.